Mayor Pushes N.y. Pushcarts Into A Crisis

May 02, 1994|By Janet Cawley, Tribune Staff Writer.

NEW YORK — Pushcarts may come to shove on the streets of Manhattan in a food fight that pits Mayor Rudolph Giuliani against the ubiquitous open-air vendors of franks and sausages, pretzels and ice cream, gyros, sodas and coffee.

Giuliani wants to move most pushcarts out of Midtown, where for years they have dotted streetcorners with their bright umbrellas and aromatic, inexpensive fare. The mayor's office claims it is simply enforcing long-ignored 1983 regulations, and the law is the law.

The vendors, mostly immigrants who are licensed and pay taxes, say this is their livelihood; they have families to support. They believe if they get shunted to avenues outside Midtown, sales will plummet.

Besides, they point out, a pushcart lunch-say, a hot dog and soft drink for less than $2-is one of the few bargains available for the cost-conscious customer.

"We're not committing crimes. We're not stealing," Theofilos Charitos said last week as he stood beside his pushcart, one eye peeled for police, near the corner of 56th Street and 5th Avenue.

Two blocks south of Charitos' wagon, Tarek Elhosini stood behind his cart on the corner where he has worked six years and implored: "We're here all the time. We don't bother anybody. ... We help people. ... We want to work hard. We don't want to go on welfare. Please, please for my family. We want to work."

After police recently began handing out warnings and summonses to the vendors-repeated violations can bring confiscation of their carts-they staged a protest march, pushing their carts down 5th Avenue in a kind of wiener wagons-ho and displaying signs with messages such as "Snack Not Crack" and "We Sell Food Not Drugs."

Spokesman Vernon Richardson said the Republican mayor elected in November on a law-and-order platform "is going to enforce the law as it is on the books."

To the mayor's office, enforcing the law is part of the "quality of life" issue that Giuliani stressed in campaigning, vowing to eliminate low-level irritants-such as the squeegee wielders who wash windshields unprompted and then demand money.

In the vendors' case, Richardson said, they cause congestion, block streets and bring a "bazaar-type atmosphere" to their locale.

Alfred DelBello, an attorney who represents the Big Apple Food Vendors Association, cites the number of different permits a vendor must apply for, including ones from the Departments of Health and Consumer Affairs, and says, "You know it's easier to move nuclear waste through New York City than to sell a hot dog. It literally is. You only need one permit to move waste."

Richardson's response to the licensing argument is, "The mayor can only use the analogy that `I may be licensed to drive a car but that doesn't mean I'm licensed to drive on the sidewalk. ...' They are licensed to sell only at certain locations, and if they go outside that, they're illegal."

There are not many locations in Midtown, which extends roughly from Lexington Avenue to 8th Avenue in the 40s, 50s and 60s, for vendors to set up carts legally. Pat Cohen, spokeswoman for the Consumer Affairs Department, estimates about 50 Midtown streets are off-limits.

Estimates of the number of food vendors in the area run from 200 to 400, so overflow into forbidden territory seems inevitable. Besides, the pushcart operators want to be near their customers, many of whom are aghast at the idea that the wagons might go.

Stafford Passley, a longtime customer of Charitos and a self-described hot dog and sausage man, said "I think it's wrong to move them, especially for people who have low incomes. We end up suffering."

Robert Lewis, a window washer noshing at Elhosini's cart, said Giuliani's crackdown is "ridiculous."

And Steven Mark Friedheim, from Augusta, Ga., who was wolfing down a frank with mustard and onions from Elhosini, said, "I love Sabrett's (franks). I think they're terrific. I'm always on the run and I eat here often."

If there's any solution to this pickle, it may come from a Democratic city councilman from Brooklyn named Anthony Weiner.

He introduced legislation to establish a 120-day moratorium on enforcing the pushcart laws-which former Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins discreetly had managed to ignore-and hold hearings in the meantime. Weiner says his measure will be considered in committee May 11 and "hopefully will pass soon after."

"To my mind," says Weiner, who represents a middle-class area with residents who commute to Manhattan, "this is a consummate middle-class issue ... . It's hitting the vendors' pocketbooks, but in a way the working stiff is getting hammered too. ... The captains of industry are not exactly lining up (at the carts) to get their morning coffee. ..."